


Pure Admiration

by Mysecretfanmoments



Category: Persona 5
Genre: Dancing, M/M, Pre-Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-03
Updated: 2017-07-03
Packaged: 2018-11-22 15:21:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,043
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11382903
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mysecretfanmoments/pseuds/Mysecretfanmoments
Summary: Akira and Ryuji play a dancing game; Ryuji comes to the uncomfortable realisation that Akira is cute.





	Pure Admiration

When Akira suggested a dancing game, Ryuji wasn’t sure what to say. It was cool enough in the attic—rare this summer—but dancing sounded a little…

“It’s good for your reflexes,” Akira said, sensing his hesitation. “I do it by myself a lot.”

“By yourself?” Morgana asked, sounding kind of smug.

Akira exhaled sharply, almost a laugh, and met Ryuji’s eyes. “I do it, and Morgana rolls the other controller around to see if he can score higher than me.”

Ryuji looked at Morgana. “And does he?”

“Frequently!” Morgana said, at the same time as Akira said, “he has once or twice.” Ryuji knew who he believed.

He took another moment to think about it, but he’d pretty much decided. He’d come here to play games; the game Akira suggested wasn’t the kind where you just sat around, but maybe that was fine. It’d be fun, competing with Akira in a new way.

“Okay, okay,” Ryuji said. “Give me a few rounds to get used to it though. I ain’t done it before!”

“Deal,” Akira said, and turned to get things started. Ryuji and Morgana eyed each other.

“You’re not getting a turn while I’m here, so just forget it,” Ryuji told him.

Morgana glared—then loosened up visibly, jumping up onto the counter. His face went cat-smug as he licked a paw. “Why would I want to, when I can watch you fail instead?”

“I won’t fail!”

“Yes you will. You’ll never beat Akira.”

That might be true, but Morgana didn’t have to be a dick about it. “Shut up!”

A cheerful song from the old TV interrupted them. Ryuji accepted the motion controller Akira handed him with more gusto than he meant to, angry at Morgana, and Akira inclined his head at him but didn’t comment. Ryuji stomped some distance back, and after a moment Akira took his place next to him.

“We can only play it while there are no customers,” Akira said, jerking his head at the stairs. “If Sojiro yells up we’ll have to stop.”

“Got it.”

Akira moved through part of the menu screen and had Ryuji click player two. After a moment Akira stopped and looked at Ryuji’s hand holding the controller, taking it without asking and adjusting the strap. The brush of Akira’s fingertips on Ryuji’s wrist was light, but it made Ryuji jump anyway. He laughed slightly. “Thanks, dude.”

“For my own benefit,” Akira murmured, head still bent close to Ryuji’s. He tapped Ryuji’s controller. “Don’t want Sojiro to murder us if this flies out the window.”

“Totally possible,” Ryuji said, sighing. “I smacked a bystander in the head with an arcade gun once.”

“I know.” Akira’s voice was low, amused. For a moment Ryuji felt a dark shiver, hearing him like that outside the metaverse, so close—and then Akira stepped back. “You told me.”

“Right,” Ryuji said. He waved the controller about, dispelling the weird moment. “Well—show me how it’s done!”

“Don’t I always?” Akira asked with a tip of his head—Ryuji grinned back—and then Akira had picked a song, and the screen was changing to player select.

“Uh,” Ryuji said, looking at the two figures. The one highlighted by Ryuji’s cursor was definitely female. “I have to dance like a girl?”

“I’ll be the girl if you want,” Akira said, flicking his wrist. The motion displaced Ryuji’s cursor on the girl, bumping it to the guy. Akira followed his own cursor, switching places with Ryuji in the room. “Better?”

“Ah, uh, yeah…”

A countdown bleeped, putting a halt to the half-thought that had been forming in Ryuji’s mind, and the song started. It was a popular one Ryuji had heard plenty of times in stores, though it was old. He waved the controller about trying to keep up with the guy’s silhouette on screen. How were the legs moving? And the arms? Ryuji was stepping with the wrong foot, where was he meant to be, how was he meant to move like—

The game had him and Akira switch positions, Akira giving him a helpful push, and he tried desperately to keep up. Swing right arm with controller in it, swing left and kick—shit! Wrong leg again. Each time he tried to correct his movements, it only made him slower. And he had the impression Akira wasn’t messing up at all.

“Dude,” he said, “this is hard!”

“Told you it was good,” Akira said without looking away from the screen, sweeping his arms up in a distinctly feminine motion before dropping fast and stepping right, tilting a shoulder. Ryuji swayed on the spot, blinking at Akira. He was totally focused on the game, not a hint of self-awareness in his movements. Somehow the sight embarrassed Ryuji—though he wasn’t sure if that was because he was being trounced or because he thought Akira should be more aware of himself when he danced like a girl.

“You’re losing bad,” Akira said in the same distracted voice, and Ryuji yelped. It was easy, then, to get back to the game—until Akira was sashaying past him again and Ryuji noticed quite how much sway he put into the dancing. Seriously…

“Akira…”

“Hm?”

“You really give it your all, huh?”

“Akira never does anything half-baked,” Morgana chimed in from his spot by the stairs. “Unlike some people.”

“Shut up! You roll a controller around!”

“I don’t have hands, Ryuji!”

“Guys,” Akira said. The song seemed to be winding down; Ryuji chanced a glance and saw Akira rolling his wrist in something like a come-hither motion at the screen, still totally unaware of himself. Sweat broke out on Ryuji’s forehead. He put his all into the last part of the song, losing sight of Akira as he pumped his fists—and so he pumped them harder. When the song ended, he breathed a sigh of relief. He breathed another when the next song’s dancers were a carrot with limbs and a stick of celery with limbs, instead of a guy and a girl.

“Carrot or celery?” Akira asked, quirking a brow at Ryuji.

“Definitely carrot.”

“Shit, I was hoping for carrot,” Akira said, with perfect deadpan delivery, and Ryuji bit his lip against laughter.

What made Akira so cool? Ryuji couldn’t quite put his finger on it outside the metaverse. When Akira was his real-world self he didn’t show the wild recklessness he displayed as Joker, but maybe it was enough to know that the recklessness was there under the surface. Did others think Akira was as cool as he did? It was his whole demeanour, the slope of his shoulders and the angle at which he held his head, like water would always flow off his back. It made him seem like a quiet, constant force of nature. When Akira danced like a girl, it wasn’t cringey. He was just giving something his all like always, dipping into sensuality that shouldn’t really be there. The fact that he could do it without the least trace of embarrassment made the attic feel close and tight and like all the air had been sucked out.

Thankfully, he was dancing like celery with legs right now, and that was a lot less sensual.

“Keep up,” Akira said, jumping, and Ryuji jumped along.  _That_  was easy.

“Right, right.”

They made it through that song and the next. Morgana made a noise of discontent behind them.

“You’re better at this than I expected,” he told Ryuji. “I thought you’d be clumsier.”

Ryuji was plenty clumsy, but he wouldn’t say that in front of Morgana. “It’s fun! Tryin’ to keep up. I’m definitely no match for you though, Akira.”

“I’ve done them all before,” Akira said. “It’s good for my—uh. Personal development.”

“Reflexes, you said.”

“Charm and guts,” Morgana corrected, and Ryuji frowned at him.

“What the hell you talking about? Guts?” It sounded like a stat in a game. Why would dancing raise it?

“Nothing your tiny brain could comprehend,” Morgana said, and Ryuji sighed loudly. Why did Morgana always have to be such a dick?

“Next song,” Akira said, but Ryuji made him skip the one that came up; it was two girl dancers. The next one was a girl and a blob.

“Really?” Ryuji asked. “Those are the options?”

“Don’t tell me you won’t dance like a blob either,” Akira said. The girl Akira was supposed to dance like seemed to be wearing a piece of candy as a skirt, and her hair was long and pink.

“I’ll dance like a blob,” Ryuji said, almost defensive in the face of Akira’s self-assuredness. Seriously, what was this guy on? The song started, and Ryuji resigned himself to fate. For a while he tried not to look at Akira, though he saw the cutesy motions the girl dancer did onscreen—and then he couldn’t help himself. He looked.

And of course, Akira was giving the performance every effort, looking totally unselfconscious. For a moment Ryuji was in awe—and then Akira wagged his finger in cutesy girl indignation, leaning forward, and a laugh burst forth from Ryuji’s chest. Akira’s eyes met his for a moment.

“Jealous of my moves?” Akira asked, a smile tugging at his lips. He didn’t stop dancing; his fluffy hair bobbed with his motions, occasionally shaken out of his eyes by a heedless flip of his head. He’d taken his glasses off, Ryuji realised, and his face looked somehow younger without them—or maybe that was the flush in his cheeks, the hint of a smile he still wore.

Something in Ryuji’s chest twisted. It wasn’t painful exactly, but there was an awareness that made him feel heavy. He wanted Akira to enjoy himself more, to continue being himself—and Ryuji wanted to be there with him.

“You’re losing hard,” Akira informed him, even though Ryuji had kept on dutifully swinging the controller as he stared.

“Can’t compete with your  _moves_ , I guess,” Ryuji said, right as Akira began to skip in a circle around him. This was ridiculous. Laughter bubbled up in his stomach, and it came out when Akira skipped around him again, hard rips of laughter he couldn’t keep down. Eventually even Akira slowed, messing up slightly, unable to remain totally unaffected in the face of Ryuji’s laughter.

“Harsh,” he said. He was still going, but he was losing the thread. His face was split by a grin as he emulated the candy girl.

“Sorry, man.”

“You can mock me when you win.”

Like that was ever gonna happen. “Dude, this isn’t mocking. Pure admiration.”

“Oh yeah?” Akira’s head tip was sassier than it ought to be, still emulating the girl, and Ryuji let out an uncomfortable laugh. No guy had any business looking that cute.

He swallowed suddenly, struck by the fact that Akira  _was_  cute: the glitter of his eyes, the flush on his cheeks, the dark mess of his hair. Ryuji shook his head to clear it. Did he really think Akira was cute? Since when? He swung his arms too hard and got solid  _okays_  instead of the  _yeahs_  he’d been getting, frowning. Why  _was_  Akira so cute? It was weird for a guy, right? Cool, yeah, but cute?

The song ended just as Sojiro shouted up the stairs to stop. Akira looked a little disappointed—and suddenly the fact that this game kept making Ryuji think weird things like that Akira was cute or sensual didn’t matter because he just wanted Akira to be happy.

“Sucks,” he said to Akira’s back as Akira ejected the game. “We’ll play it more later.”

“Yeah?” Akira asked, brightening. He looked over his shoulder at Ryuji, and the cute thing was confirmed. It didn’t make sense on a guy’s body—but this guy’s body wasn’t repulsive no-man’s-land to Ryuji. It was… Akira, he supposed, and that made it precious. Everything about Akira was great, perfect, just the way it should be. He was cool and cute, not too tall or short. He always smelled clean. If a guy could be cute—hot—whatever girls were meant to be, it would be Akira.

Ryuji coughed to clear his throat, wondering if that thought was weird or excessive.  _Nah_ , he thought. Just true.

“Yeah, man. Of course.”


End file.
